As people are clearing out to make way for gifts they will receive for Christmas, Farragut resident Mike Such, owner of Junk Bee Gone, offers tips to help them get started.

“We’re here to help,” Such said.

“We are pretty busy (during the holidays),” he added. “People clean out an awful lot right before the holidays because of all the relatives coming into town. And then of course, afterward when they get all that new stuff.

“They have to make room for it. After Black Friday, the next week, I can’t tell you how many TVs we took because everybody bought the TVs that were on sale, and they needed to get rid of those big projection TVs they had.”

To get started organizing, he first recommended scheduling a time.

“They have to schedule that morning or that day they are going to do the removal,” he said. “There’s nothing like an incentive to have a dumpster in your driveway to get going.”

Such then recommended the person go through the items with the goal of cleaning out and getting more space.

“When we go into a house, into an attic, and a box hasn’t been open for 15 to 20 years, it probably means you don’t need it anymore,” Such said. He also recommended having someone with you who has the same goal of removing items.

Such said he has seen people put things in a storage facility then leave those items for two or three years before they get tired of paying the rent and call him to get rid of the stored items.

“There’s a way to stop that and not put it (in storage) in the first place,” he said and laughed.

Such and his wife, Tracy, started Junk Bee Gone in 2005 in Farragut.

“I was in the corporate world, the sales end of it, working for Bush Brothers in (Knoxville),” he recalled. “(I was) traveling five days a week and my kids were 9 and 7, and I was missing too much.

“So I had to change somehow so I wasn’t traveling so much.”

The Suches saw the junk removal concept and researched it.

“And off we went,” he said. “At the time there was no other junk removal company here in Town.

“There were trash companies, but no one who would actually go into your house and remove stuff from the house,” Such added. “We were the first ones to help people remove unwanted items, from couches to refrigerators to full house cleanouts, warehouses and offices.”

Junk removal is one of four services Junk Bee Gone provides. It also offers driveway dumpster service, document shredding/destruction and light to medium demolition.

“We have a 15-yard driveway dumpster that we drop off, and people load up and we come back and get it,” he said. “We were the first ones to do that, too.”

Such explained a resident or business owner can use the dumpster for up to seven days, then Junk Bee Gone will pick it up.

“It’s a 50-50 split between commercial and residential, and we have 70 dumpsters now and 12 trucks,” he said.